“Lessons in return for payment?” Avraham asked, and Ze’ev said, “Certainly, although I know I didn’t do it for the money. I asked for ninety shekels per hour, a lot less than the going rate. Put it this way, the lessons didn’t make me a wealthy man. I did it for Ofer.”
Avraham remained silent, perhaps waiting for Ze’ev to elaborate. “Everything’s been reported to the Tax Authority,” he added and smiled.
“How many times a week did you tutor him?”
“Once a week—and sometimes twice before exams. In the beginning, we worked on grammar. They put an emphasis on grammar at his school—which is obviously wrongheaded. That’s not the way to teach children a language, and that’s not the way I teach students at my school, in Tel Aviv. But Ofer was a fast learner. He was very organized and systematic in his studies and progressed well, so we could move on to other things—vocabulary, conversational English, reading and writing. Those are the important things, as far as I’m concerned, and he struggled more with them. Would you like me to try to explain to you why I was drawn to Ofer?”
“Yes. Please,” Avraham replied. “But just remind me first: I believe you told the policewoman who interviewed you that the lessons took place at their home, in his room, right?”
The question puzzled Ze’ev. “Yes, I just told you, a minute or two ago,” he said.
Avraham looked down at the sheets of paper strewn across the desk in front of him. “True, true, you did,” he said. “Go on.”
It was the moment Ze’ev had been waiting for, the moment to begin his statement. He was ready with its prepared and polished opening lines. They had coalesced in his mind already on Friday, when he thought that his talk with Avraham would take place on Saturday, at the site of the search he had initiated, almost solely for his own purposes. Ahead of their current meeting at the station, he had repeated them to himself.
“I’ve been teaching students of Ofer’s age—eleventh- and twelfth-graders—at Ironi High School in Tel Aviv for five years,” Ze’ev began. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with this school; many of its students were born with silver spoons in their mouths—children of actors and singers and playwrights and journalists. It’s right in the center of Tel Aviv, next to the Cinematheque, if you know where that is. The school offers studies in film, theater, and dance, and most of these kids, not all of them, are kids who are sure that the world belongs to them. They know English—and not only English—far better than their teachers, or so they think. At fourteen they are already movie directors. Little Spielbergs. Some are poets and writers; they form rock bands and work on albums. They derive their confidence not from themselves but from their environment, from their parents, from society, which tells them they can do anything and everything, that they excel at everything. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, although it may sound like it. I’m simply stating the facts. Ofer comes from a different place and was a different child. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? Just to look at him for a second was enough to tell you that this was a boy who didn’t believe in himself, who felt he was worthless. But he was sensitive; he had the vulnerable soul of an artist.”
Avraham was becoming more and more drawn in by his words—just as he knew he would be.
“What do you mean by ‘vulnerable’?” the police inspector asked, and Ze’ev continued: “Every word I said to him had an immediate effect on him from within,” he said. “If I had a good word for him, praised him for something he wrote or a grammar exercise he solved correctly, he would glow from within. He didn’t show much on the outside. And the opposite too: if he made a mistake, or if I criticized something he wrote or said, he’d be devastated inside. I have to stress that it wasn’t anger toward me or an inability to take criticism that would do it. He’d break down inside, purely out of anger at himself. It was like every simple mistake had the potential to overwhelm him with a deep sense of failure and incompetence. And you must understand, it has nothing to do with his true capabilities. It stems from the place he comes from. I like to call it the ‘social place.’ ”
Avraham listened without making notes—a sign, as Ze’ev knew from experience, that he had finally captured his interest. When students put down their pens and lift their heads from their notebooks, you know they’re listening. “Aren’t all kids like that?” he asked, and Ze’ev had a broad smile on his face when he said, “You don’t have children, do you?”
Avraham shook his head to confirm.
He took a liking to the police inspector the moment he saw him from the balcony window, on Thursday afternoon, restlessly scurrying around the building. And Ze’ev knew he’d be able to capture his attention even when Avraham had initially ignored him. In the movies they say, “They could have been good friends had they met under different circumstances.” In their case, however, it was the opposite. Had they met under different circumstances, Ze’ev probably wouldn’t have taken any interest in Avraham at all. They were unlikely to have much to talk about. The current circumstances alone had brought them together and were allowing them to speak like this to each other.
“Not all children,” Ze’ev said. “It’s because of misconceptions like that that I believe policemen—and not only policemen, teachers too, by the way—should be trained in psychology. With most of the children at the school where I teach, compliments are taken for granted—because they’re so sure they’re the best. Criticize them, and they simply think that you, and not they, are mistaken. To them, it’s crystal clear that you’re wrong. They just never make mistakes.”
Ze’ev was unaware of just how much time had passed—an hour, maybe two. Avraham appeared at ease. He was no longer glancing at his watch and seemed to be thirstily drinking in his words. And the more Ze’ev spoke, the more he felt that his observations were becoming even sharper and more profound than he had initially believed. From time to time, Avraham would jot down a few words on the page in front of him, and Ze’ev suddenly wanted to talk about how all of this was linked with the act of writing. Another letter was formulating in his thoughts. He wanted to write it later that evening.
A few weeks into the private lessons, it dawned on Ze’ev that he wanted to help Ofer with not only his English studies. He wanted to get close to him and help him open up. And Ofer had felt it. To enrich his vocabulary, and primarily in an effort to expose him to different experiences, other than those with which he was familiar at home, Ze’ev suggested that he watch movies and high-quality English-language television shows without subtitles. He lent him a DVD with episodes from the first season of House, as well as a Martin Scorsese box set, which included Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Casino. Within a week, Ofer had watched them all. During their lessons, he tried to encourage a discussion of the films, in English of course. Ofer was restrained, embarrassed—not because of his English, but because no one had ever asked him his opinion of a movie. Ze’ev subsequently lent him a box set of Alfred Hitchcock films. “It may sound pretentious,” he said, “but I honestly believe Ofer discovered the world of movies thanks to me.”
“What do you mean by that?” Avraham quickly responded. “Do you think he had a special interest in movies?”
He appeared on edge.
“Yes, if you were to ask me, I’d say Ofer would like to try his hand at acting. In one of our last lessons, we read through a text they had received at school, a passage related to the theater, and we spoke about drama school, acting classes—things that were so far removed from his world, he didn’t ev
en know they existed. For him, actors and artists were a different species of people, who were born that way, and there was no chance for him. Do you know that he asked me if one studied acting at university? I tried to find out if he was interested in studying drama—this was all in English, of course—and he said no, and then possibly yes, that he wasn’t sure if it suited him. I explained to him that he needn’t wait until university, that there were youth drama classes he could attend, probably even in Holon, and maybe even at his school. I thought of speaking to his parents about it, but decided against it; it should come from him. Besides, I don’t think they’d let him, anyway.”
“Why? Do you think they were strict with him?”
“No, don’t get me wrong, I think they are good people—both of them. The mother is a quiet, intelligent woman who knows exactly what she wants; and the father, too. He comes across as a simple and decent workingman. But they weren’t aware of this side of Ofer. They never nurtured it—not, in my opinion, out of meanness, it’s simply not a part of their world. It took an outsider to notice that Ofer is a different kind of child, with a different soul, the soul of an artist—like I told you before—and to give him a push in the right direction.”
“What was your impression of the home when you were there, of his relationship with his parents?” Inspector Avraham asked. “Do you think Ofer bore any resentment toward them?”
“No, no, you’re missing the point here completely,” Ze’ev replied. “I think it’s a great home. Warm and everything. You probably know that Ofer has a severely mentally disabled sister, and they care for her lovingly—Ofer too. Perhaps they devoted more time to the sister, because of her condition, but that’s not the issue. I’m simply saying they weren’t able to see that side of Ofer because it’s beyond their scope. There are things that certain parents aren’t able to give their children, things that someone from the outside has to step in and give.”
“So you don’t think they placed too much on Ofer’s shoulders because of the father’s absences and the condition of the sister?”
Why wouldn’t he drop that subject? Ze’ev wondered. And he wasn’t sure, either, what Avraham had meant about the father’s absences. “Maybe,” he said. “But why do you ask? Do you think Ofer has disappeared because things were hard for him at home? I don’t think that’s the issue here at all. Listen, let me try to clarify my observation for you. The point is not that they treated him badly, but that they weren’t able to see that he’s not like them. There’s a difference. They couldn’t see what I saw, which is why I thought it was a shame that we stopped the lessons.”
“Why did you stop? After how long?”
“It’s quite ironic. I think they were stopped because they helped. Ofer’s grades improved and the school was thinking about bumping him up to a higher group. If you ask me, the lessons were stopped because the parents were unable to cope with the effect they had on Ofer. They told me they were looking for a math tutor in place of the English. I said I was willing to continue for nothing, but they wouldn’t have it. They just wouldn’t hear of it.”
“And did Ofer want to continue?”
“Of course he did.”
“Did he actually say so?”
“He wouldn’t have dared to say anything to contradict his parents.”
“And when the lessons stopped, did your relationship end as well? Did you still see him?”
“Of course I saw him. In the building, obviously, from time to time. I’d ask how he was doing and progressing, and invited him over to borrow more movies. I was under the impression he was avoiding me because he felt bad about the lessons ending. He seemed embarrassed about it, guilty toward me. He shouldn’t have.”
Ze’ev was exhausted. When he got home he realized that his talk with Avraham had gone on for more than two hours. Michal was waiting for him to bathe Elie. They had already eaten supper. She asked him how it went, and he said okay. He lay back on the sofa in the living room and she placed Elie in his arms while she went to fill up the blue tub. Elie was clutching an old pair of broken sunglasses and trying to put them on his father’s head. Despite his weariness, Ze’ev was happy to have his son in his arms and looked forward to spending the morning with him the next day. He had missed his son’s sparkling eyes and sense of humor.
“But what did you say there?” Michal shouted out to him from the bathroom, although she knew how much he hated conversations that were yelled from one room to another.
“The same I said to you,” Ze’ev said. “I told him about Ofer. Though I don’t know how much help it will be to the investigation.”
His exhaustion and confusion, in fact, were the result of the end of his meeting with Avraham—as well as what had happened to him on the way home. He had said what he came to say, but Avraham had continued to ask questions. And as Ze’ev’s responses had shortened, so had Avraham’s questions. They had moved on to the routine line.
“Did Ofer ever tell you anything that could imply he may be caught up in something criminal or about plans to run away from home?”
“Did you notice anything unusual about Ofer’s behavior in the days leading up to his disappearance?”
“Did he ever talk to you about his friends?”
Ze’ev responded tersely and in the negative; he had already answered all these questions on Thursday.
Avraham glanced through the notes strewn out on the desk in front of him. “In the initial interview we conducted at your apartment, your wife said . . . Let’s see here . . . She said she had heard an argument or fight taking place in the Sharabis’ apartment, and that she believed it was the evening before Ofer’s disappearance. Do you remember any such incident?”
What incident? She had probably heard noises from the television.
“Do you hear everything that goes on upstairs?” Avraham asked.
“Generally, no. You hear things as you would in any apartment building. But, like I told the policewoman who interviewed me, we’re probably the ones who make the most noise in the building.”
Avraham asked if he had anything else to add, and Ze’ev shook his head. And then he asked him to say what he thought had happened to Ofer. “Tell me what your gut feeling is,” Avraham said. “Try to imagine where he is at this very moment, right now.”
Ze’ev was at a loss for words. Had he been asked the same question at the start of the interview, he would have been better equipped to think of a possible scenario. “Imagine?” he asked. “How can I imagine where he might be? I only hope nothing has happened to him, that he’s in a safe place.”
Ze’ev was about to stand up to leave. “May I?” he asked, pointing to his ID card, which still lay on the table, but Avraham had more questions. “When you gave him the lessons, were his parents always home?” he asked. “What time were the lessons?”
“How should I remember?” Ze’ev replied. “I think Hannah was usually home.”
“Do you recall what time the lessons were?”
“It varied. Usually around five or six.”
“Did you ever arrange to meet somewhere else—somewhere other than in the building, I mean?”
The allusion stunned him. “No. Why would we meet elsewhere? Am I suspected of anything?” he asked, and Avraham said, “God forbid. I’m simply trying to find out if you ever ran into him elsewhere. I’m an investigator. That’s my job.”
On his way home Ze’ev considered whether he should remove the letter from the mailbox. Avraha
m’s final questions were echoing in his mind, leaving him with a dull sense of fear.
The letter wasn’t there.
He turned on the light in the stairwell and looked for the brown envelope in the small plastic trash can in the foyer of the building. He then looked around again near the mailboxes.
Ze’ev didn’t write another letter that night. He was dead tired and got into bed early—but didn’t fall asleep. He lay on his back and looked up at the ceiling. He recalled the scent of Michael Rosen’s skin and his long legs, and regretted not taking Kafka’s Letter to His Father out of the library. Michal was hanging up the washing, and when she came into the bedroom, he closed his eyes and pretended he was asleep. She read in bed—a novel by Haruki Murakami. And at that moment, someone in the apartment above—just ten or twelve feet above his head—was reading his letter. The mother perhaps? Or the father?
He had been trying since yesterday to imagine their response. They were his first readers. Did they read the letter together or separately? And how did they react? He wished he could have watched their faces as they read. Still pretending to sleep, he turned his back toward Michal, who also had her back to him. She was close to him, yet knew nothing. He regretted that.
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